


Where the Door is Open

by getoffmysheets



Series: Screw the Rules, I Have Fake Science [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Lestrade's Shitty Marriage, Molly is suddenly Darker and Edgier, Multi, Poor Lestrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2018-09-13 12:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9122620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/getoffmysheets
Summary: A tale of love, longing, loneliness, insecurity, and self-acceptance.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was an idea I've had honestly at the same time I was writing "Open To Suggestions" and I've been nursing it this whole time, wondering if I should go through with it - as you can see, I finally decided on 'yes'.

When they met, Sherlock Holmes deduced Gregory Lestrade for the very first time, in a back alley with glazed eyes and a shirt covered in his own sick.

"Early thirties despite the premature gray. Working class parents, family on the Continent, probably your younger Beta sister. An alpha, and bonded, though unhappily. Your wife is an Omega older than you by...hm. About nine years, I think, but has an addiction to shopping which is beginning to trouble you. I assume you've already realized that she picked you out of a resentment of Alphas her own age. She does not understand your dedication to a job that has required you to take medication for your high blood pressure and is worried that you could one day be killed in an alley much like this one or succumb to a heart attack caused by stress."

It was also Sherlock who made that deduction that led to the final end of his marriage, the confirmation of all his suspicions and his silent resentment.

Sherlock had been right from the start.

His wife had a shopping addiction, and had eventually grown bored with her Alpha husband, who in her opinion, put too much energy into his career. He was also not a traditionally domineering Alpha, it was true. For one thing, his personality was far too laid back for that sort of thing.

For another, Greg had spent too much of his life in criminal justice to think that being an Alpha gave him the right to mount any Omega he pleased or that it somehow gave him sovereignty over every Gamma, Beta, and Omega he met.

He told her as much during their many domestics – Katherine had called him 'lazy', though. As if he should be posturing at every other Alpha who so much as sniffed in her direction. As though there were really any point. When it was all over, when the affair came to light and instead of rage, the relief he felt at her departure made him wonder if she was right the whole time or if maybe he had stopped caring about whether his wife was his Omega and only his.

The lightness of spirit he felt as he signed the last of the papers made Katherine scowl at him while as he penned his name. A clean separation.

He'd gotten the judge to agree to splitting the sale of the house and the rest of their liquid assets in half, against Katherine's protests. It helped that Greg had the multiple accusations of infidelity on his side and the sale of the house was all that he had asked for. After the papers and the lawyers, the house, and the long, cold silences. Moving, trying to do his job and do it well, even under the stress of dissolving a relationship he'd had for the majority of two decades.

Until there was just...freedom.

He hadn't really known that he'd felt imprisoned while being married to Katherine, but it was hard not to notice the difference now that he was free.

It wasn't that he didn't love her – well, no, he certainly didn't love her by the end, obviously. In the wake of her own love become resentment and then bitterness, Greg's love had eventually become anger, and then hate, and then finally just a leeching emptiness, a weariness so deep it felt like it was draining the very life from him.

But it gave him time to realize that while he had truly loved Katherine in the beginning, what he'd really loved was the marriage, the bond. That what he was missing most after the separation was not the Omega had left, but the belonging.

Most Alphas hardly gave it a thought, but Greg knew that all humans – and the Alpha and Omega in particular – were really not meant to be solitary creatures. They were meant to belong to or with another person, and after twelve years of marriage and fifteen in the same relationship, he couldn't properly recall what it was like to be truly alone anymore.

He didn't like it, not at all.

It was a good thing he didn't have to be.

The ink was fresh on the papers of his dissolved bond when Gregory Lestrade sent out a text.

_(14:17): Come over_

The reply was almost immediate.

**(14:18): Is it finished?**

_(14:18): Yes. Come over. Did you get my present?_

**(14:18): Yes**

**(14:19): Wearing it now**

He was grinning like a lunatic in public and didn't even care. Katherine watched him suspiciously as they both entered the elevator.

_(14:20): Good. I want to make you dinner and then watch you take it off_

Six weeks after the ending of his marriage, Sherlock noticed a new difference in the Detective Inspector, and it wasn't until he happened to catch his scent in passing that he realized what the change was – Lestrade had a new romantic partner, and she was both well-established and long-term.

_Probably live together, brownish-red hair, Beta, owns one short-haired cat, enjoys reading, works a desk job, lipstick is a shade of neutral rose, wears a garment made of cranberry colored cashmere-wool blend – most likely her coat – and another garment of some kind of navy tweed. Bold choices, but an office professional of some description seems likely._

Sherlock could perceive her scent on him, though he now realized that it had been too soft before, overwhelmed by the pungent floral notes of his Omega ex-wife as it was. As a Beta, her scent was significantly fainter but now that Lestrade seemed to be in residence with her, she had saturated the Alpha's hormone receivers enough to build over his scent.

Objectively, Sherlock admitted that it was actually quite nice.

The prominent notes were brighter citrus smells of orange and grapefruit, with a hint of something herbal – perhaps basil – and a softer subtle paper mustiness that reminded him of the ink and dust of libraries. Familiar and bizarrely comforting. It was a much better fit with the sea-and-salt smell of Lestrade than his ex-wife's cloying floral tones.

He did not actually connect the dots until he happened to be at Bart's late one evening finishing tests on pollen from a special flower found inside a private conservatory.

Molly had stayed – it was a kidnapping and rather time sensitive – but after discovering that the whole thing was a hoax set up to cash in on the insurance money, Molly began shutting the lab down and went into her office for her coat and purse. She was locking the doors when Sherlock looked over and finally saw her as she turned to leave. Specifically, he saw her outfit, particularly her coat. He hadn't been in view of her the entire evening, but now...

Cranberry-colored cashmere and wool blend. Brownish-red hair, Beta, one short-haired cat, enjoys reading, lipstick is a neutral in the rose family. Oh. Oh. Citrus-and-basil scent. Oh.

“Enjoy your date,” he drawled, eyeing her dress with a slightly critical air. Black silk wrap, full jewelry. Professionally styled. French manicured nails. It was the sort of thing he would expect for an outing to a top of the line restaurant. He felt his brows raise. Was Lestrade going to propose tonight? He almost admired that level of courage so soon after his first divorce. Perhaps he'd decided to just go in with both feet.

Molly smiled a small secret almost-smirk and looked up from the messaging screen of her phone. “I'll tell him you said hello.”

Unfortunately for Sherlock, the final deduction didn't come until Molly Hooper had already turned the corner. “Your coat was a gift...”

_Designer, expensive. Not a garment Molly could afford, and more extravagant and fashionable an item than she would typically choose for herself. A gift, then. Probably for her birthday this past September. She only wears it on special occasions, is too worried about damaging it to allow herself to utilize it in her everyday wardrobe. Lestrade? He could hardly afford pay for such a thing right now, and he would be unlikely to choose clothing for a gift, and certainly not something wildly expensive and slightly impractical like this. Who, then, loves Molly Hooper enough to spend over £2000 on a coat that she'll only wear a few time a year?_

As the doorman opened the restaurant door to her, Molly gave him a quick smile at the coat-check and allowed the hostess to lead her into the darker rear of the lounge. Already waiting for her at their table, as she knew he would be, was none other than Mr Mycroft Holmes.

Eschewing the fine mahogany dining chair across from him, Molly slid into the plush leather bench seating beside him and lay her head on his shoulder. “Hello,” she murmured, nuzzling his collar as his hand draped casually over her waist. “Your brother says hi.”

The thumb of the hand on her waist shifted, the touch tender and warm over her hipbone. Molly had been in the middle of sex with other men that had felt less intimate and possessive than that one small gesture. “You realize he probably thinks you're having dinner with Gregory,” Mycroft chuckled into his glass of sherry, cupping and stroking the silk of her dress. It had surprised her at first, how tactile he could be in his own ways. “Probably thinks he's proposing tonight.”

Molly choked on her water, covering her mouth to hide her expression, which she knew was likely somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “It's cruel to keep leading him around in circles, isn't it?”

“If he is unable to deduce it, then the knowledge will continue to allude him,” he replied, with a touch of smugness. More quietly, he added “I know the idea of explaining this to anyone makes you uncomfortable, him especially.”

“It's nothing to do with him,” she said, low but fierce, looking up to meet his eyes – sky-blue and reaching into the very heart of her. The truest expression of the color she'd ever seen. “I know what you thought, at first...but it's got nothing to do with him – and I-I don't want him assuming that this decision revolves around him. That my decision - our decisions - belong to him, in some way. He's already said enough horrible things to me in memory to last the rest of our lives – I don't want to hear what he'd have to say about this.”

“I didn't mean to upset you,” Mycroft murmured, subtly pressing her closer to his side as the waiter approached the table. He was always the one who ordered here, giving their requests in perfect French and letting her curl into him sleepily as his smooth, even tones washed over her. If the waiter thought it strange that this man in the three piece suit had a well-dressed woman half asleep and practically in his lap, he gave no indication – none of them ever did, here.

When the man had disappeared, she murmured “I'm not upset. I just don't want you to think I'm ashamed of this. I'm not. I never have been.” Lower, she said. “But sometimes I think maybe you made a mistake, choosing me. Choosing us.”

“I'm too content to be convinced this was anything less the best decision I've ever made,” he said sincerely. His hand, steady and claiming and warm against the thin, smooth skin at her belly. So sure of them that it made her – not for the first time – wish that she saw the world with his eyes.

“Please kiss me.”

It wasn't the words that he immediately identified with, it was her tone, but she had used both the first time that they kissed. A pleading in the edge of her voice, not quite high enough to be a whine. A longing that told him it wasn't the physical nature of the gesture she really craved, but thread of emotional connection.

His eyes swept through the room. He was not worried about someone seeing them, he was worried about someone seeing her. As far as Mycroft Holmes was concerned, he was the only person in the restaurant allowed to see Molly Hooper in any state of arousal, with Gregory not currently present. This kiss was every bit as good as the first. It would never failed to amaze him how...logical it felt. How certain and inevitable.

Molly had told Lestrade the tale of their first kiss over coffee on a rare lazy afternoon, and the man had nearly laughed himself sick. He was the man who had set them along their course, after all. The origin of their strange threesome.

It was their twenty-sixth date.

They were both introverts and naturally slow movers in the context of romantic relationships. Separate from that, they both had reasons to be cautious.

Mycroft was hesitant during the whole courtship. Molly probably wouldn't mean to mentally substitute him with the other Holmes brother, but it would likely happen just the same. While Mycroft could not be said to be modest about his abilities intellectually, he was aware that of the two of them, Sherlock was the brother often considered gifted in appearance.  _Monday's child is fair of face,_ their mother would murmur, kissing his brother's dark curls, then squeezing Mycroft's shoulder, as he patiently insisted he was too big for kisses by then. _While Tuesday's child is full of grace._  Molly probably would find their physical relationship to be severely lacking, too. He had a low-to-moderate sex drive, as far as he could determine, but Gammas weren't frenzied by hormones and could be notoriously difficult to engage sexually. He'd tried romance as a young man newly hired in Her Majesty's Revenue, and they each ended if not poorly, then at the very least, quite awkwardly. He often found his attention drifting during sex, and whether male or female, his partners seemed to expect more than he could give them physically, and sooner than he could give it emotionally. Moreover, he honestly just didn't see how a woman so besotted by Sherlock could possibly keep any interest in him.

Molly went in half-deranged panic attacks on the first ten dates. She was certain that he could see straight through her, through all her clumsy, schoolgirl-like fumbling and awkward conversational skills. See through her whole awful and mediocre dating history that for a man like him, must be laid out in front of him like a map. She always seemed attracted to – and to attract – the type of men who saw her as a resource to be used, men like Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty. By the second date, she'd realized that if someone handed her a list of all of his traits, she'd think she was looking at the perfect man. He was just...so, so painfully polite. His voice was always pitched to measured and even tones, he rarely drank, even more rarely smoked, was always on time, and if he had to cancel, he always had immediate options to reschedule. He paid for her meals, opened her doors, and held her elbow like a Regency gentlemen straight out of 1895. She knew there was no way this could last. Mycroft Holmes thought _Sherlock_ was stupid, for heaven's sake – he was probably bored to tears with her. Eventually, he would find her too clingy, or too needy, or too morbid. Well. Perhaps not the last one, considering his little brother. It didn't get much more morbid than that.

Even in spite of these doubts, they both still kept coming back. Kept making appointments and faithfully rescheduling every time their work interfered. In cafes, restaurants, theaters, concerts, and art exhibits, both primly dressed and perched across from or beside each other. Sneaking glances at bare wrists and collars and slender fingers.

It was raining on their twenty-sixth date, and she walked into an Italian restaurant soaked and shivering and inwardly cursing her stupidity of trying to go straight there after work with no umbrella. Mycroft had asked the waiter for a towel before she even sat down and had draped his jacket over her trembling shoulders, smoothing the fabric down with the lightest of touches.

She spent the whole meal covered in goosebumps from the simple touch and wishing that their chairs were closer.

Seated in the backseat of a black sedan (because of course he wouldn't let her walk home in the rain), Molly could feel her courage falling. She didn't know how much longer she could keep doing this to herself. Keep falling in love with a Holmes brother who was probably more interested in the morning paper than he was in her. There were even moments that she almost preferred Sherlock's swift, honest cruelty to the distance of Mycroft's gentle politeness.

As they pulled up her flat's building, he murmured “Wait here a moment,” and exited the vehicle with brolly in hand, circling round the back of the car to her door while Molly sat owl-eyed in the heated leather seat.

He opened her door, umbrella shielding the open entry from the drizzle and holding out a solicitous hand. She spent a full thirty seconds wondering how this had become a part of her life.

When she took she hand what she meant to say was “It's only rain. We already know I won't melt.”

To her own dismay, what actually came out of her mouth was “Please kiss me.”

She wanted even a hint of interest, of passion. She got more than a hint. 

Surprising her again, Mycroft planted a hand on the headrest beside her cheek, half inside and half outside the car, and pressed a kiss to her mouth. Chaste if not for the firm, hungry hint of pressure, the barest suggestion of teeth on her lower lip. He pulled away from her, and she discovered as her eyes fluttered open that she'd had them closed – and he had, too. She also realized that she was breathing hard, nearly panting. He hadn't even touched her below the collarbones and had her melting into the leather seats. She suddenly realized that her fingers were curled into his lapels, keeping him near. Perhaps to keep him from running away.

Underneath her knuckles, Mycroft's heart raced, beating as wildly as her own. He blinked at her lazily, a barely-noticeable sweep of his gaze from her face to her lap and back again. Just as suddenly, Molly was aware that her nipples were hard beneath her blouse - almost painfully - and that he'd already noticed. She took a fortifying breath in, trying to stabilize the world around her, but all she could smell was his aftershave. "May I have another?"

As gentle as the hand cupping the back of her neck was, his large palm against her nape still felt like power. Like power, like fear, like falling. His voice was pleasant and soothing, even lined with something so rough. "You may."


End file.
